Bruegger's Bagels plans to move into Loveland, Fort Collins

Chain seeking franchisee to open 3 or 4 restaurants here

Bruegger's Bagels, a chain featuring New York-style boiled bagels, is planning to expand into Loveland and Fort Collins in the next year.

But first the 30-year-old company needs to find a franchisee with $450,000 to spend and a net worth of $1.1 million.

"We have targeted Larimer County - Loveland and Fort Collins - as one of our markets for aggressive growth," said Kelly Tope, director of franchise development for the Burlington, Vt.-based company.

Bruegger's has four Denver-metro franchises and one in Colorado Springs, and it's planning to boost its presence statewide, she said.

"We're looking at aggressively hitting markets we already have a presence in," she said. "We're not looking at greenfield areas."

She said one of the franchise owners in Denver will add 10 more locations by 2016, and the company wants to find someone to build three or four in Northern Colorado over the same period.

It costs $450,000 to $500,000 to open a Bruegger's restaurant, including the $30,000 franchise fee. Tope said the investment is considered low in the franchise restaurant industry.

Bruegger's has 304 locations in the U.S. and Canada - 100 of them franchises - and hopes to open 100 more by the end of 2015, according to Tope.

In Northern Colorado, the company has talked with some prospective franchisees but hasn't made any deals yet, she said. Once an agreement is signed, it typically takes six months to a year to open a new Bruegger's.

The company likes locations of at least 2,000 square feet in strip shopping centers, she said, with a healthy daytime population and often a grocery store or other traffic generator nearby.

Tope said Bruegger's shops build a loyalty with customers, who often will return several times a week. The "bottomless mug" coffee program helps bring them back, she said.

Bruegger's bagels are made New York-style, she said, which means the dough is kettle-boiled first and then baked, resulting in a soft bagel with a crisp shell.

If a Bruegger's Bagels store opens in Loveland, it would double the number of restaurants dedicated to making and selling bagels. An Einstein Bagels corporate-owned location opened in Palmer Gardens last spring.